Invite attendees from SharePoint calendar

Calendars are one of the most important tools when using SharePoint. The ability to schedule meetings, which can be viewed by users, is particularly popular as it allows you to have a publicly visible calendar. Out of the box it’s possible for users to add any SharePoint Calendar to their personal Outlook, in order to gain quick access to the appointments it contains.

Entries in the SharePoint calendar can either be made

1. directly in SharePoint
2. in Outlook, using a synchronized SharePoint calendar
3. from Outlook with a simple e-mail meeting request
   

Unfortunately the opposite – send meeting requests from SharePoint to Outlook – is not possible out of the box. This means that, without additional software, you can’t schedule an event in the SharePoint calendar and at the same time invite the meeting’s participants using an e-mail invitation.

However, a few years ago one of our customers needed a solution for this exact problem. Appointments and conferences were coordinated mainly using SharePoint. Therefore, to ensure things run smoothly, it was important to be able to invite people to meetings using SharePoint.

Sending meeting requests via SharePoint – our solution

During the implementation it was important, that the solution was compatible with the standard protocols. Therefore the iCalendar protocol is used for the software. This ensures that the add-on created for SharePoint is also compatible with virtually all popular e-mail clients, i.e. not just Outlook, but also Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird etc. and of course also web based e-mail clients. Another big advantage is that the meeting requests can also be viewed on mobile devices.

As other customers also showed significant interest in this solution, we decided to use this project as a foundation to build the Calendar E-Mail Extension. This SharePoint template is unique on the market and is used by many satisfied customers throughout the world.

How does it work?

Send a meeting invite

Using the solution you can directly invite attendees in the SharePoint calendar to an event. The attendees and guests receive an e-mail invite directly in their Outlook. Then they can accept the appointment, reject it or suggest an alternative time. The responses can be viewed by the organizers and all other participants directly in the SharePoint calendar. Additionally organizers can also forward the responses.

Join meetings

You can also publish events for employees and guests and allow them to sign up themselves. Users who wish to take part in an event receive a confirmation of the meeting immediately. Registered attendees can also unregister themselves at any time directly in their personal Outlook calendar.

Keep attendees up to date

If you cancel a appointment, postpone it or change the location, you do not have to inform the participants. Simply edit the meeting in the SharePoint calendar and the application does the rest. All communication can also be followed directly in the SharePoint calendar.

As you can see it is also possible to send meeting requests using SharePoint and to make working with SharePoint calendar much easier and more efficient. The Calendar E-Mail Extension is available for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016 and now also for Office 365.